Short cuts: the sequel's revenge

Whatever else you think about Mission: Impossible 3, it's undeniable that the slick spy-action franchise has come up with a smart and efficient naming convention - the promotional campaign stating simply M:i:III is at once as sleek, as modern and as pocket-sized as its star.

The title deserves a mention because, while the movies have always loved a good money-spinning series, Hollywood has started to get itself rather tied up in knots over them - to the extent that they would have us handing over our plastic to see such things as they call xXx: State of the Union or The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement.

Back in the mists of celluloid time, the title just wasn't an issue. The Thin Man was followed by After the Thin Man and Shadow of the Thin Man, The Pink Panther "Returned" and "Struck Again", and Tarzan quite happily shared the bill with The Huntress, The Amazons and The Leopard Woman.

In 1974, though, things changed. Francis Ford Coppola thought it unnecessary to burden his follow-up to The Godfather with anything more fancy than Part II, and suddenly numbers were all the rage. The following year, we had French Connection 2 (and Emmanuelle 2). Then came the 1980s, and the sequel ran riot, as the studios realised that they could churn out any old copycat rubbish for the increasingly young audience, and they didn't even need to think up a new name for it

It was the Golden Age of numerical sequels; of Ghostbusters 2, Karate Kid 2 and the Back to the Future films. In 1988 there were numbered entries for at least 17 significant series, including Poltergeist, Phantasm, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, Critters and Hellraiser, making it an annus mirabilis for horror fans.

There have always been film-makers willing to buck the trend, however, to give some measure of thought to titling their sequels - George A Romero's Night, Dawn and Day of the Dead, for example. The elegant simplicity of following Alien with Aliens was an equal stroke of genius, though this faded with the oblique Alien 3 and then died altogether with the fourth in the series, Alien: Resurrection.

Ah, yes, the colon, denoting the filmic subtitle. Lynne Truss may have been spurred into action by Britain's appalling grammar, but in LA the colon has never had to fear extinction. Speed 2: Cruise Control. Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Jaws: The Revenge. Highlander 2: The Quickening. The colon shows Hollywood at its most conflicted. The first half of the name is intended as reassurance: things are the same as they ever were. The second half implies that no, after all, things have moved on. In fact, they have got better

The rest of this year's offerings are unlikely to offer respite. Once we've digested Cruise's new outing, we have still to face Rocky Balboa (which, with its feel of a rock band's self-titled album, gives the impression at once of pompous self-importance and a grim lack of imagination); The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift; Highlander: The Source; Mortal Kombat: Devastation; Halloween: Retribution; and X-Men: The Last Stand. You can't help feeling that, in at least some of these cases, the titles lack the correct numbering because no one is actually sure how many of the bloody things there have been.